Closeness centrality via the Condorcet principle

We provide a characterization of closeness centrality in the class of distance-based centralities. To this end, we introduce a natural property, called majority comparison, that states that out of two adjacent nodes the one closer to more nodes is more central. We prove that any distance-based centrality that satisfies this property gives the same ranking in every graph as closeness centrality. The axiom is inspired by the interpretation of the graph as an election in which nodes are both voters and candidates and their preferences are determined by the distances to the other nodes.